Why did Silicon Valley’s top VC invest $17M in this startup founder?

John Ling, co-founder & CEO of Meridian, is building AI for one of the most overlooked but massive categories in software: spreadsheets. After seeing how fast AI could change the way people work, he set out to help the millions of people still buried in Excel move 20x faster.

Before Meridian, John spent years obsessing over how AI systems actually work, from data quality and evaluations to real-world workflows. His edge? First-principles thinking, relentless curiosity, and a willingness to spend thousands of hours where others won’t.

00:00 Intro
01:30 How he became a top 1% performer at ScaleAI 
02:59 Why I Bet on This Founder - a16z, Kimberly Tan 
07:26 Bias Towards Action
10:08 Spend 10,000 hours with AI - Own your unfair advantage

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John Ling, co-founder and CEO of Meridian, shares his journey from finance and consulting to building an AI-powered spreadsheet tool backed by Andreessen Horowitz with $15M raised. He discusses how deep immersion in LLM technology at Scale AI shaped his conviction that AI can transform spreadsheet workflows the same way coding tools transformed software development. He argues that no one has truly invested thousands of hours applying AI to financial modeling, creating a major opportunity. Key themes include learning by doing, first-principles thinking, the value of prompting skills, and building a culture that tolerates experimentation and failure.

What Silicon Valley's Top VCs Want in an AI Founder Right Now | Meridian, John Ling